The future of Iraq is a mixed
picture now
By John E. Mulligan
The Providence Journal

March 30, 2005
Wednesday

CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq -- The commander of the Marine force that
drove Iraqi insurgents from Fallujah last fall declared this
week that the town will become a model for how democracy can
take hold in Iraq.

"A year ago we had an
insurgency that operated with impunity inside Fallujah,"
said Gen. John Satler, commander of the Marine Expeditionary
Force that took the insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad last
November.

Now, said Satler, the insurgency
is damaged and somewhat dispersed, while U.S. troops nurture
a growing partnership with Iraqi security fighters. All the same,
daunting political and military challenges face the fledgling
Iraqi government and the U.S. force of about 150,000 that protects
it, according to Satler and other top military officials at Camp
Fallujah and several other military bases.

Gen. George Casey, the commander
of U.S. ground troops in Iraq, said the force could be reduced
to about 138,000 by the end of this year if the formation of
the new government works out according to plan.

Next year, if progress continues
"some fairly substantial reductions in U.S. troops could
result," Casey said in an interview at Baghdad's "Water
Palace," as the troops call the U.S. military headquarters
in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces.

The military leaders spoke
as Sen. Jack Reed and Gen. John Abezaid, the top U.S. commander
of the Persian Gulf region, hop-scotched around Iraq aboard Blackhawk
helicopters piloted by a unit of the Rhode Island National Guard
that arrived only weeks ago.

Satler hosted Abezaid and Reed
almost exactly a year after the notorious display of the charred
remains of several U.S. contractors in Fallujah.

Satler held out the story of
Fallujah as a source of great hope for Iraq's future and - by
implication - for the prospects of reducing and eventually concluding
the commitment of U.S. troops here.

The hanging of the Americans'
bodies from a Fallujah bridge last year was perhaps the most
ghastly sign of an occupation gone sour, less than a year after
Saddam Hussein's regime - and his oversize statue - had been
toppled in the streets of Baghdad.

Satler explained that the insurgency
had turned Fallujah into a well-armed and fortified staging ground
for its attacks.

"They'd bring their raw
recruits into Fallujah, train them, give them their gear and
deploy them around the country," Satler said.

Along with the image of the
swinging body parts, Fallujah gave the world another image to
withstand - last year's photographs of American GIs abusing detainees
at the Abu Ghraib prison.

Then there was the spectacle
of U.S. recruited Iraqi forces unwilling to fight the rebels
- a mixture of foreign jihadists, hard-line Sunni Muslim veterans
of Saddam's Ba'ath party, and a radical Shiite militia led by
a rebel cleric who hid out and directed his troops from inside
Fallujah. No significant Iraqi unit had proven itself in battle
at that point.

A number American military
leaders said the Iraqi security forces have improved greatly
since that low ebb, first holding their ground in secondary roles
for Marine actions in Fallujah last summer and early fall. Since
then, some Iraqi units have taken on and done well in weightier
military jobs.

The pivotal event in Fallujah
was November's action by the Marines, who pushed out virtually
all the insurgents.

Satler said that success has
rippled across Iraq in several ways. Many of the insurgency's
top leaders and the makers of the roadside bombs have been killed
or dispersed.

On the run, he said the leaders
have to avoid U.S. and Iraqi patrols and random checkpoints.
Plus phone and computer communication can now uncover their positions
and cost them their lives.

Satler said the battle of Fallujah
provided a great psychological boost as well as paving the way
for nationwide elections in January.

Since then, he said there have
been limited but encouraging signs of political interest among
"moderate" rank-and-file Sunnis - as distinct from
the former Saddam regime leaders.

Satler said the Marines have
organized town meeting-style gatherings in the war-devastated
neighborhoods of Fallujah that drew on a handful of Sunnis in
the early days after the election.

Now, he said, the planning
sessions pack the room whenever they are held.

Reed repeatedly praised the
U.S. troops and their top brass for their work on the military
side of the Iraq problem. But he played his recurrent theme of
worry that days of trouble lie ahead.

"The most critical phase
now is the formation of a functioning Iraqi government, which
is still not accomplished and is now overdue" on some key
political deadlines, said Reed.

Meanwhile, said Army Gen. George
Casey, "the insurgency's back is not broken." And he
said the complex mixture of anti-American forces still holds
the power to injure Iraq's infant government.

But he said "We have $100
million in dinars locked up here at camp ... We are using it
to rebuild the housing and neighborhoods of Fallujah."